The chances are you’ll already be well aware of Stelios Haji-Ioannou’s ‘easy’ empire of businesses, whether through easyJet, easyHotel, easyBus or one of the many other easy ventures. Well, finally it’s time for easyBet to join the party.
Given the likes of Ryanair have long advertised scratch cards on their flights, the arrival of easyBet on the betting scene is perhaps inevitable. Stelios will no doubt have seen the success stories of Sky Bet and more recently Virgin Bet establishing themselves amongst the top UK betting sites, so he’ll be hopeful of an instant impact of his own within the industry.
easyBet have signed an agreement with Matchbook, so the site and indeed the easyBet registration process may already be familiar to some, although it will naturally carry the famous orange colours associated with other easy brands.
While it’s still very early days for easyBet, they’ve already taken a couple of interesting decisions that will pique the interest of other betting sites and prospective punters alike.
The first is that, by choosing to team with Matchbook, when you visit the site for the first time you won’t be presented with a typical fixed odds betting site akin to Ladbrokes, bet365 or Paddy Power. Instead, you’ll see a betting exchange with the option to both back and lay bets against fellow bettors. Users of Smarkets or the Betfair Exchange are sure to be happy to see an extra option on the market. Yet this remains a brave decision as the layout has the potential to cause uncertainty amongst those who are not regular bettors. The powers that be will no doubt hope the brand has the gravitas to overcome this potential hurdle.
The other significant decision which immediately sets easyBet apart from all of its rivals is the structure of the welcome offer. Whereas other sites ask you to place a single bet, typically of £5 or £10, to qualify for free bet rewards, easyBet ask you to place two separate £10 bets on different events. This is likely to garner a mixed reaction. Some may feel it is unnecessarily confusing, but splitting your stakes across two events does at least give you a second chance to experience that winning feeling, and indeed an extra opportunity to give the site a proper test drive.
Whether these decisions are likely to be mimicked by other sites remains to be seen, but it is always refreshing to see something a little different attempted on the betting landscape.
